Just over a month ago a declaration of war was made against the media. The media itself seems to have barely noticed, but John Pilger's address to Columbia University was clear in its intent. "It is time," he said, "to storm the Bastille of words". He, and many others, see the internet as the battleground for the fight for the hearts and minds of the next generation. And, though the media does not seem to have realised, it is a fight that they could lose.

As the internet continues to break down the division between journalists and the unpaid commentators and bloggers, official media outlets have lost many of their traditional advantages. Many on the left who share Pilger's worldview believe the "liberal media consensus" is one of the main obstacles to a better world, and that individual columnists and journalists within the structure are unwitting dupes of a corrupt system. The most vocal and persistent of the anti-media groups are Media Lens, a pressure group who urge their supporters to target liberal media outlets, such as the BBC, Channel 4, the Guardian, Independent and Observer for perceived "bias".

Most journalists who have been targeted by Media Lens detest them and their tactics. Their more fanatical supporters have a tendency to label those who do not share their views as war criminals. Despite this, they have support among a younger, intelligent, internet-savvy generation who were politicised by the Iraq war and increasingly reject the traditional media.

And, ominously, they seem to have the weight of numbers online. Because of the way a search engine like Google functions, it ranks pages according to the number of times they in turn are linked to. Pieces by Media Lens will be linked to by the passionate people running anti-war or far left sites. For example, despite the hundreds of pieces he has written for the Observer, one of the top results for a search on foreign correspondent Peter Beaumont is a Media Lens piece accusing him of "outrageous" biased reporting over Iraq.

But because the mainstream media generally tends to ignore the anti-media crowd as a lunatic fringe, anti-anti-media pieces do not exist to be linked to in turn. Any searches on the net fail to turn up the necessary context to allow an open-minded person to make up their own minds. The internet is already testimony to the truth of the assertion that those with the shrillest, most extreme voices tend to set the frames of debate. The real danger for the media is that if world events contribute to yet more insecurity, the voices of extremism will get even louder.

Among those is the internet-based anti-media crowd, who are utterly secure in their views that the mainstream, liberal media itself is helping to drive us inexorably towards war and chaos. If the Iran/US standoff creates as much instability as the Iraq conflict, or September 11, then many more people will begin looking for answers, for certainty and security. The anti-media crowd offer that.

New media outlets such as Media Lens are the obvious beneficiaries of the breakdown in respect for the traditional media that the internet has unleashed, but they have none of the safeguards built into the mainstream media - they are unaccountable, both for complaints of bias, and even for basic factual checks.

As I found while examining their campaign to discredit Iraq Body Count (IBC), their theory of "unconscious bias" generally collapses when it is applied to real world events and real journalists. But this theory is essential to the Media Lens worldview, as it allows them to ignore or dismiss any "fact" in the media that questions their narrow anti-American/anti-Western version of events.

And unlike any other belief system, this dangerous and irrational anti-media worldview refuses to be tested in debate. For example, Media Lens have claimed that "we" are being "softened up" for an attack on Iran via the liberal media, muttering darkly about MI6 planting stories via the BBC. But when they were invited onto Newsnight to defend this they refused. And they continue to refuse to engage in any way that does not allow them total control of the interaction. They also refuse to answer questions that challenge their version of events, for example, they have completely ignored the devastating critiques of their campaign against IBC.

But unfortunately this refusal to engage may not matter. The war has already been declared, and it's a battle for the hearts and minds of a new generation. And the danger is that the anti-media forces could win it without a fight.